With all the new 'pretty pictures' of plans from a private developer for a big project on the Drew Street Parking Lot that's mostly filled by the cars driven by some of the 700 students attending all-day classes at charter school Heritage Academy located on the west side of Center Street, backing onto Drew Street and recently expanded to a 1-story building at 44 W First Avenue directly adjacent south of the parking lot, any reasonable person might wonder if the private developer's plans fit in with existing traffic patterns and the new neighborhood anchored by Encore On First since 2013.
The image for recommended traffic patterns around the Heritage Academy property, running east-to-west with Center Street on the far right, inserted above is from this source: http://hamesa.com/parentsql-pick-up-and-drop-off/.
You can click or screen-tap the image to enlarge.
PICK UP & DROP OFF.
Below are a few items to note regarding parking at Heritage Academy.
- 10-minute temporary parking is available on Center Street in front of the school. After you leave this parking area, DO NOT make a U-turn on Center. This is not safe and Mesa Police Dept will issue tickets.
- Longer-term parking is available on the West side of campus.
- Parking is also available in the City of Mesa parking lot West of Drew Street or North of 1st Avenue.
- Parking passes are required for all students and faculty. (see front office)
- The best place to wait for pick up is on route #1 below.
- On route #2, please do not stop on the turn by the Jr high building. This often causes an undue backup onto Drew Street.
- Below is a map of the pick-up and drop-off routes.
It's a high-traffic area for both parent's cars dropping-off/picking students, student-driven cars parking during school hours in available spaces designated [1], and pedestrians - students walking between classes in the main building or annex across Drew Street to/from classes in a red one-story building at 44 W First Avenue [labeled as Burrell's/Luce in the image]
Here's the proposed development site-plan from the City of Mesa looking south from Main Street at the bottom, with north-south Center Street at the far left. The Drew Street Parking is center left, outlined as the small-site footprint under consideration for an out-of-scale 15-story hotel, 75 "above market-rent' apartments with commercial/retail spaces.
You will notice the developers appear to have some plans in-mind for both the public thoroughfare of Drew Street between Main/First Avenue and the alleyway access from Drew to Center Streets. The 100+ free parking spaces for student parking west of Heritage Academy and Main Street businesses - gone.
Any reasonable person might as if this is 'a good fit' in any way, shape or form, or just another example of "The Mesa Way" to-do-things that time-and-time again are fields of schemes foisted on the backs of taxpayer-financed tax increases to benefit certain special-interest groups with undisclosed connections to the generations-old entrenched political machine inside City Hall - do we really want more of this????
Pretty picture or another Pie-In-The-Sky scheme ??
[Image from article link below]
Please not a REALITY-CHECK image from on-site in the Drew Street Parking Lot last night on ground-level at end of this post.
The green-space you see near the upper-left in the first image is an outdoor athletic area for the school, where sports are a huge attraction for student activities.
It's been re-constructed with new connections for water and electricity and turfed-over in the last few months, a new passageway built on the side of the faculty lot for student foot-traffic on Drew Street to/from a newer annex on First Avenue - with a new mural appearing on the south wall called "Heroes".
Newly-installed pavers in the outdoor school lunch service area are almost ready in the area between the main building to the right and classrooms located at 42 S Center Street to the left. The sunshade has been in place earlier.
[Image was captured about two days ago]
Here's the official "spoon-fed news" by Arizona Republic reporter Jessica Boehm
'Portland on the Park' developer wants to build 15-story downtown Mesa apartments, hotel
Link > http://www.azcentral.com/story
Here's what the proposed site looked like last night from ground-level at the Westside boundary of the .91-acre site looking east to the Mesa Arts Center, behind the backside of Heritage Academy... not-so-pretty, huh?
The 8-story City Hall building is seen as far left
No comments:
Post a Comment